Where are my adidas shell toes?

As anyone who knows me knows -- I love hip hop. Not in a "hit the clubs and go dancing" way (although I do love that), but in a way that really infuses so much of what I believe, how I relate to people, and what inspires me.

I believe that hip hop is a philosophy and a lifestyle, in addition to being about the music. No, I don't carry a gatt, I don't wear my pants low, I don't start beefs with my colleagues. I don't call very many people "ho." I'm a nice white girl from Minnesota who just happens to vividly remember the first time she heard "Rappers Delight", who remembers what she was wearing the first time she danced to Run-DMC. Yeah, I totally kick it old school, people.

But lately, I haven't been feeling the music. The mysogyny is too much, I don't care about cars and your ice. There's a top-ten song that is essentially about bukkake. I'm not going to write about my complaints about contemporary hip hop, this isn't about that.

So, I made a point to watch VH1 Hip Hop Honors. It took me back to what I loved so much about the music with tributes to Whodini, Tribe Called Quest, Snoop, New Jack Swing and Teddy Riley.... This girl was nostalgic. I was rediscovering the essence of what was so important to me.

It inspired me to re-read "Yes Yes Y'all", an oral history of the earliest days of hip hop in New York, mostly in Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens. The people who were there the first time someone scrated a beat. Russell Simmons a million years before he married Kimora. The evolution of the MC and the b-boy. Even though I'm not from the BK, I've never met Kool Herc, and my first exposure to hip hop was on my front lawn in white-bread St. Paul, reading the book makes me understand how this is part of my life.

This book takes you back to what it's all about -- expression, tradition, great music dedicated to raising your consciousness and getting you on the floor for five minutes of funk.

Even if you aren't a big hip hop fan, it's an important book that helps you to understand where hip hop came from, how deep it can be and how it became a major cultural force in the U.S. and around the world.

Oh hell, just read it. Oral histories are fun and easy to read, hip hop is some good music, and it'll maybe even remind you of drinking keg beer in a dank basement in a shady part of town. Good times...